Years ago Carolyn Heilbrun, a long-time feminist (Writing a Woman's Life) who also writes mysteries as Amanda Cross (The James Joyce Murder), decided to leave before age dragged her down by committing suicide at 70. Fortunately, she reneged, and chose instead to chronicle moments from her 60s. Always erudite, often deliciously wry, if sometimes pretentious, Heilbrun hits the mark more often than not in this book of essays. She speaks of "unmet friends" whose lives have paralleled her own and blessed deliverance from the academic bustle and backstabbing of Columbia University, the tyranny of memory, and foolish feminine clothes. Throughout, her sense of renewal is as welcome as her determination to go against the grain.


From Publishers Weekly
The word "gift" in German means "poison" and, to a linguist, the title might imply some bitterness. Heilbrun, former Columbia University English professor and noted literary critic, is a woman who obviously chooses her words well. Threading through the 15 essays is the theme of her youthful intention to commit suicide when she turned 70; several of the chapters convey the tone of an apologia for not having done so. The essays reflect and resonate with the general female experience of growing old: comfort in established family and home, loss of socially construed femininity, and a certain resentment at having been too often ignored or dismissed by the prevailing (male-dominated) culture. Heilbrun (The Education of a Woman) concedes that the past was probably not better than the present, only different, and looks to the young, especially her children, to teach the significance of those differences: "Those gentler times to which we old hark back imprisoned and excluded too many of us." In her most poignant chapter, "The Family Lost and Found," Heilbrun tells of her rediscovery of the courageous and intelligent immigrant women who were part of her father's family, although he had not seen fit to tell his only daughter about them. Her rediscovery of that lost half of her family, late in her life, was both encouraging and bittersweet. Heilbrun offers observations and stories, not lessons or polemics, but she is a perceptive witness to the vagaries of life. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Heilbrun (The Education of a Woman, LJ 11/1/95) will also be known to many readers as mystery writer Amanda Cross. In these essays, on knowledge gained in her fifties and sixties, she often refers to "unmet friends," as the reader feels toward her persona here. The pace is suitably reflective, but this in no way diminishes her clarity, humor, or deeply held feminist conviction. Among other topics, Heilbrun examines the unexpected pleasures of E-mail, her love for her dogs, a declaration of freedom from dresses and heels, the perils of finally getting a longed-for "room of one's own," her relationship with poet May Sarton, appreciation for the wisdom of the young, and the company of men. Heilbrun decided years ago to end her life at 70 but now chooses to live each day that comes. These essays bear witness to her continued reasons for doing so. Recommended.-?Barbara Hutcheson, Greater Victoria P.L., British ColumbiaCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Rebecca Pepper Sinkler
Despite the subtitle, Carolyn G. Heilbrun's reflections on The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty is not a self-help or inspiration book, although it may be inspiring, and it is, in the broader sense, helpful. . . . It is more like a letter to a friend, the kind you don't lie to.


From Booklist
What a treasure Heilbrun is! Perhaps best known in academe for Writing a Woman's Life (1988)--which traced the narrow "marriage quest" narrative imposed on the lives of women, real and fictional--and outside it for her Kate Fansler mysteries (written as Amanda Cross to preserve her Columbia University professorship, from which she is now retired), the seventysomething Heilbrun is a superb advertisement for the examined life. Past the age at which she had long planned suicide, she marvels at the unexpected pleasures of her sixties: a new home, new dog, solitude that is not loneliness, a new link (e-mail!) to male friends from her grad school days, relatively recent, highly valued relationships with women friends, special writers (among them, May Sarton and Maxine Kumin), a close but not stifling multigenerational family, and "not wearing dresses." Still healthy and curious, Heilbrun "daily choose[s] life the more earnestly because it is a choice." Receptive readers will hope she makes that same choice for many years to come. Mary Carroll


From Kirkus Reviews
This very satisfactory collection of essays celebrates the author's seventh decade as she looks back on it from her serene and energetic eighth. Heilbrun is a former Columbia University professor and a writer noted both for her feminist scholarship (Writing a Woman's Life, 1988, etc.) and her Amanda Cross mysteries. Satisfactorily married for half a century, the mother of three grown children, and a grandmother, she nevertheless planned to commit suicide when she reached 70. But when that magic number arrived, she discovered in looking back that living through her 60s had been an ``astonishing'' pleasure. Unlike some of her peers--Doris Grumbach and May Sarton among them--she has not grown crankier as she has grown older, and she attributes that in part to a life with ``many advantages,'' including good health and the discovery of close women friends. At first glance, the essays encompass a broad diversity of subjects, from Bianca the black dog to the joys of E-mail to androgyny and bisexuality (in a liberating section called ``On Not Wearing Dresses''), and including thoughts on living with men and on the fantasies of a lifelong Anglophile. Yet in fact, the range is narrow. Each piece, more or less fruitfully, discusses coming to terms with the past and formulating the terms of the present ``without a constant . . . stream of anger and resentment, without the daily contemplation of power always in the hands of the least worthy.'' In essence, the author describes a state not of growing older, but of being older, a state that incorporates both grace and growth. Drawing elegantly on the poets and authors she has taught and written about, from Andrew Marvell to Gloria Steinem, Heilbrun offers a glimpse not only of the rewards of aging, but of feminist battles fought and won. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
When she was young, distinguished author and critic Carolyn Heilbrun solemnly vowed to end her life when she turned seventy. But on the advent of that fateful birthday, she realized that her golden years had been full of unforeseen pleasures. Now, the astute and ever-insightful Heilbrun muses on the emotional and intellectual insights that brought her "to choose each day for now, to live." There are reflections on her new house and her sturdy, comfortable marriage; sweet solitude and the pleasures of sex at an advanced age; the fascination with e-mail and the joy of discovering unexpected friends. Even the encroachments of loss, pain, and sadness that come with age cannot spoil Heilbrun's moveable feast. They are merely the price of bountiful living.



From the Publisher
As a young woman, Carolyn Heilbrun made a resolution not to live past "three score years and ten." Taking her own life at the age of seventy, she reasoned, would lend clean closure to a life well lived, and would keep her from the many tragedies of aging--becoming a burden to her children, witnessing the deterioration of her body, falling prey to a crippling disease. But on the advent of her seventieth birthday, she looked back on the past ten years and found, to her surprise, that her sixties had been the happiest decade of all: after fifty years, her marriage had matured into a happy balance of companionship and respect for solitude; she had developed deep friendships with her grown children and a small circle of peers; she had mastered a highly successful career as a scholar and writer. In the poignant, essayistic writing that best showcases her elegant talent and provocative mind, Carolyn Heilbrun celebrates the many pleasures of a mature life.Filled with wisdom, knowledge, wry humor, and literary allusion, The Last Gift of Time is a moving book for all women invested in the pursuit of leading a woman's life to its fullest capacity.


From the Inside Flap
When she was young, distinguished author and critic Carolyn Heilbrun solemnly vowed to end her life when she turned seventy. But on the advent of that fateful birthday, she realized that her golden years had been full of unforeseen pleasures. Now, the astute and ever-insightful Heilbrun muses on the emotional and intellectual insights that brought her "to choose each day for now, to live." There are reflections on her new house and her sturdy, comfortable marriage; sweet solitude and the pleasures of sex at an advanced age; the fascination with e-mail and the joy of discovering unexpected friends. Even the encroachments of loss, pain, and sadness that come with age cannot spoil Heilbrun's moveable feast. They are merely the price of bountiful living.


From the Back Cover
"Like a letter to a friend, the kind you don't lie to . . . Heilbrun looks back on her 60's with buoyant pleasure."
--The New York Times Book Review

"THOUGHTFUL . . . OFTEN HUMOROUS . . . An eloquent look at life after 60 . . . Heilbrun's irrepressible humor and irreverence are among the first qualities noticed in The Last Gift of Time."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"HEILBRUN'S VOICE: HONEST, UNSENTIMENTAL, INTELLIGENT, WISE, RELEVANT. She is rigorous, she takes herself seriously, and that voice, at 70, is her reward."
--The Boston Globe

"READING CAROLYN HEILBRUN IS LIKE LISTENING TO MOZART. . . . In her wit and commitment to measured statement, she comes as near to the achievements of the 18th-century essayists as anyone writing today."
--Houston Chronicle

ANNOTATION

Carolyn Heilbrun--distinguished author and scholar, happily married mother of three, and grandmother--tells why she had always resolved to take her own life at the age of 70 and the reasons that led her to negotiate, day by day, the choice to live instead. 220 pp. National ads & publicity. 20,000 print.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When she was a young woman, distinguished author and critic Carolyn Heilbrun made a solemn resolution not to live past "three score years and ten." Taking her own life at the age of seventy, she reasoned, would give closure to a life well lived. But on the advent of her seventieth birthday she realized that the past ten years, the years of her sixties, had been filled with unexpected pleasures. As a consequence, Heilbrun writes: "I find it powerfully reassuring now to think of life as borrowed time. Each day one can say to oneself: I can always die; do I choose death or life? I daily choose life the more earnestly because it is a choice." With the wry humor and clarity of vision that have long marked her work, Carolyn Heilbrun writes with honesty about the emotional and intellectual insights that brought her "to choose, each day for now, to live."

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The word "gift" in German means "poison" and, to a linguist, the title might imply some bitterness. Heilbrun, former Columbia University English professor and noted literary critic, is a woman who obviously chooses her words well. Threading through the 15 essays is the theme of her youthful intention to commit suicide when she turned 70; several of the chapters convey the tone of an apologia for not having done so. The essays reflect and resonate with the general female experience of growing old: comfort in established family and home, loss of socially construed femininity, and a certain resentment at having been too often ignored or dismissed by the prevailing (male-dominated) culture. Heilbrun (The Education of a Woman) concedes that the past was probably not better than the present, only different, and looks to the young, especially her children, to teach the significance of those differences: "Those gentler times to which we old hark back imprisoned and excluded too many of us." In her most poignant chapter, "The Family Lost and Found," Heilbrun tells of her rediscovery of the courageous and intelligent immigrant women who were part of her father's family, although he had not seen fit to tell his only daughter about them. Her rediscovery of that lost half of her family, late in her life, was both encouraging and bittersweet. Heilbrun offers observations and stories, not lessons or polemics, but she is a perceptive witness to the vagaries of life. (Apr.)

Library Journal